The Titanic Awards

Airport delays?  You might want to check for coyotes.  Seriously. Raleigh-Durham International Airport officials have noticed an increase in coyotes on the runway. They’re using bottle rockets and cap guns to scare them off, but that doesn’t seem to stop them from walking out in front of taxiing planes.

(7 votes, average: 9.00 out of 10)

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Air Travel airport, coyotes, raleigh, runway, taxxing

The BBC reports that a Brit was arrested at Rio de Janeiro’s airport when he attempted to smuggle at least 1,000 live spiders (many of them tarantulas) out of Brazil in his luggage. In Brazil, animals are banned from export without permission.

The man, a pet shop owner, was caught when security X-rays detected the spiders  in two separate suitcases.  (Lesson: animals show up on security X-rays.)

He’s out on bail but faces up to a year in prison and a max fine of $2.3 million.

(15 votes, average: 8.27 out of 10)

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uncategorized airport, brazil, pet shop, rio, smuggling, spiders, tarantula

Welcome to Verona’s airport.

(6 votes, average: 8.33 out of 10)

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Air Travel, Videos airport, longest line, longest queue, verona

He sleeps on waiting-lounge chairs and washes himself in the airport bathrooms.

According to airport personnel, he’s allowed to stay for three months as long as he breaks no laws. This means he’ll unlikely break Viktor Navorski’s record, but he may tie Hiroshi Nohara from Japan, who spent three months in Mexico City’s airport last December.

(5 votes, average: 8.20 out of 10)

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AP reports that a Yamile Campuzano-Martine lost control of her pickup truck at Tampa International Airport and crashed into a 1500-gallon saltwater aquarium, emptying it and killing nearly all the fish in the process (including one rare specimen worth $5000).

She was charged with careless driving, failure to use a child restraint device (her six-year-old was on her lap at the time) and failure to provide a driver’s license.

The fish tank was reportedly worth $50,000 to $100,000.

(4 votes, average: 7.00 out of 10)

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Air Travel, Land Travel, Photos airport, fish tank, parking, tampa

Oslo-Torp airport (serviced by Ryanair and Wizzair airlines) is 118km from Oslo. It takes 1 hour, 36 minutes to reach from the city centre. By car. Without traffic. If you’re lucky.

(7 votes, average: 8.57 out of 10)

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Here’s another mind-boggling queue from Heathrow.

(6 votes, average: 9.83 out of 10)

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Air Travel airport, heathrow, longest line, longest queue, wait

Name Catherine Watson
Who? Former travel editor of the Minneapolis Star Tribune and winner of the Lowell Thomas Travel Journalist of the Year and the Society of American Travel Writers’ Photographer of the Year. Her writing has been anthologized in many books, including “Best American Travel Writing 2008.’’ Her solo collections are Roads Less Traveled — Dispatches from the Ends of the Earth and Home on the Road: Further Dispatches from the Ends of the Earth. More at catherinewatsontravel.com.
Age 65
Countries visited 112.  (Most recent is the Faroe Islands)

Titanic Nominations
1. Worst Taxi Ride My all-day-long attempt to find the Tree of Life in the desert of southern Bahrain. The taxi driver, who’d been working on this 10-by-30-mile-wide island for 25 years, admitted he’d never been south of the Manama suburbs. By the time we’d found the damned tree, we’d been lost more times than I could count, and then arrested for trespassing.
2. Worst Toilet The dank, filthy, unlighted ruin of a public ladies’ room in central Bucharest, before Ceaucescu’s horrid government fell. No toilet paper, no soap, no “feminine hygiene products” in the whole country, no nothing.
3. Worst Meal The famous raw shrimp cocktail of Kathmandu. I ordered it to celebrate an overland trip into Tibet, got violent food poisoning, was sick for the next 3 weeks and lost 16 pounds. Only then did it occur to me how far Kathmandu was from any ocean shrimp might live in.
4. Worst Foreign Policy Idea The U.S. government’s ban on ordinary American travelers going to Cuba. It would be funny if it weren’t so stupid: Technically, we CAN go to Cuba, we just can’t spend any MONEY in Cuba.
5. Worst Airport Security Nepal’s domestic terminal. As elsewhere in South Asia, “Ladies’’ are searched separately, behind a curtain. The young female officer didn’t look up from filing her nails. “Do you have big knife?’’ she asked. No. “Do you have bomb?’’ No. “You may go.’’ Well, okay, then, if you say so…

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Famous Travelers airport, Bahrain, Bucharest, Cuba, Kathmandu, Nepal, security, taxi, worst meal, worst toilet

Ah, the subtlety of drunken French humor.

(10 votes, average: 9.60 out of 10)

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Okay, almost landing.  Crosswinds literally blew the plane off the runway.

(9 votes, average: 9.56 out of 10)

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Air Travel, Videos airline, airport, inflight, safety

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